Irma Dolores Player Hall (born June 3, 1935) is an American actress who has appeared in films and television shows since the early 1970s.
Hall often played matriarchal figures in films including A Family Thing, The Ladykillers and Soul Food, in which she portrayed Josephine "Big Mama Joe" Joseph, a role she reprised in the television series of the same name.
[19] For her work in this film, she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture in 1998.
[21] In 2001, Hall received a second NAACP Image Award nomination, in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for playing Mama Joseph.
[22] Also in 1997, she acted in the Clint Eastwood-directed film adaptation of John Berendt's novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Hall portrayed a day care operator in Meet the Browns (2008),[32] also having a minor role in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).
[33] Hall appeared as an employee for a white family in Jayne Mansfield's Car (2012)[34] and recurred as Meemaw in Hap and Leonard in 2017.
[37][better source needed] Shortly before the 2004 film release of The Ladykillers, Hall was seriously injured in a car crash in Chicago.
In the midst of a snowstorm, she lost control of her vehicle, crossed lanes into oncoming traffic, and hit another car head on.